"I really want to challenge the idea that relationships other than a one on one significant other are second best. Sometimes these are the best thing for us at certain stages of our lives, teaching us to have wider concerns, and grow parts of ourselves that actually get neglected in an intense one on one. To be fully present for people other than our significant other is a great gift to be given and to receive."
Absolutely!!
When I first went to my psychiatrist she told me that the biggest thing I had to overcome was my belief--VERY deeply embedded in me, heart and soul--that my connection to XH was more "important" than any other relationship I'd ever had. You can see the difficulty with forming that belief, that it makes one devalue other types of relationships or see them as "second-best", and to also then lament that one's life is effectively "over" if or when one loses that spouse. "One mate for life" is a really lovely ideal, and for couples who pull that off, more power to them, but it takes two equally motivated people, and if one bails out, there isn't much the other one can do about it.
So that's a major thing I've learned through all this, not to devalue the non-romantic relationships and to see the concept of "soul-mate" as something in flux, in that I will have several soul-mates in a lifetime and they will be male and female, younger and older, related or not, and I will also be a soul-mate to numerous other people. I'm thankful that my doctor had this view of things--she told me from the beginning that this was her PERSONAL view (and she also told me she'd gone through a very tough divorce after about 20 years, then spent several years alone before remarrying and that this was part of her recovery too), because she was the one who gave me the goal to shoot for in terms of simultaneously getting past the betrayal and opening up to many other people in my life.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Well said Antonia! Thank you. I just realized that that is my deep belief that has been reinforced by my Catholic faith. That is a huge downfall for me. When I got married I basically lost all my friends and am now reconnecting with them.
I lost myself in the relationship. Thanks for the insight!
M:35 W:33 M: 5 yrs. Daughter: 2 yr .7/11/10 D Final: 8/7/12
Tested and Tsquared....I'll add...my doctor was brought up strict Catholic and so was I and she said this is often something that those raised Catholic have deeply embedded in them more than people raised in other faiths. It's so embedded that belief becomes fact in the eye of the beholder, to the exclusion of all other ways of looking at things. This contributes to the way that those people then really beat themselves up for "losing" the spouse--because they automatically feel like they got this "one shot" to have a lifelong relationship with a significant other and it backfired, and so it must be entirely their fault, and now they can't have another "soulmate".
Personally I have not followed Catholicism since I was given a choice (around age 18) but she said it didn't matter, that I had really internalized this part of the religious belief and made it fact. So I judged myself very harshly by the belief. The way she put it was look, you were not born with this. Your parents and the religious upbringing gave you this belief. The way she put it was if a belief in some ideal was destroying your own self-worth or your ability to engage with others, you have to get rid of the belief or tweak it.
Basically the goal of my therapy was to learn that just because I married with the intention of it being for life, that I can't control another person because of his free will, and if he chooses to end the marriage, I should not have to "pay" for that the rest of my life by sequestering myself and not being involved with others...but yet there are also many different types of love and relationships and soulmates and I should be embracing all those types of relationships and making them all "equal." If I learn to value a relationship with a family member or a friend as highly as I do one with a romantic partner, then if I don't have a romantic partner, I'm not a failure or lacking in wholeness...and if I value all those other relationships, I think that if I am with a partner I won't become codependent on that partner.
It all makes PERFECT sense to me now and I really have no trouble with this new belief system for myself. But it took almost 2 years to get there, and the main way I got there I think was from really working on the non-romantic relationships in my life, on making new friends, and on working on my relationship with myself.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Jack you can lock this; I'm going to make a new thread :-)
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
